The Transfiguration of Mister Punch (5 page)

There was a time when I kept my stories bottled up within me. That came out of puppet mouths. Instead of weeping, I let the wood do it for me.

I have learned that the flesh must bend, our hearts must break and we must learn to speak not with, but through, the wood.

The city was developing and Rye Lane had established businesses by now. That morning I recall half a dozen old horse drawn carriages clomping through the streets, slowly passing the weekend morning shoppers and strollers. Each carriage displayed painted advertisements. I recall the ornate and curling lettering for Nestle’s Milk.

My tiny heart was pounding as others joined the following throng. The wonders of the marketplace did not distract me. After what seemed like an eternal parade, the puppet-man, spouse, dog and cart wended their way to the centre of commerce in the small town. Saturday morning on Rye Lane was an ideal choice to ‘set up a pitch, as it is known. The puppet-man and his portable show reached their destination. It was a good spot in the lane: it was clearly not their first time there. It was mine, however, and I consider that location and day a highlight of my entire, strange life.

A large crowd began to gather of people much older than I. Old and rough men joined the flock of children and the strangest sound I ever heard began to arise. It was a voice, a screaming strange voice that was beyond human, and demanded to be listened to. It was a strident, childlike screaming, a squawking that was filtered through a bee-like buzzing, a humming trill that was speaking to me. It seemed that Punch had always been speaking to me, calling out, crying. I had simply not had my ears developed to the proper degree. Today was the day I was meant to hear him.

I recall, a decade and a half after that first, awe-inspiring show, I was in my early twenties. I was walking home from some mundane task and slowed down as I walked for I heard something. It was a humming or buzzing noise. I looked around to locate the source. Was this from a machine, a drill or construction-site emanating this drone? Strange as it may seem, I found the tone, the tambour of the sound more than comforting. It was a cord that made my belly warm and I felt myself leaving my body. The sun broke out at that instant behind the branches of the tree and honey-coloured light glazed my face, neck and arms. I wept and briefly felt an unknown comfort I spent a lifetime hoping to recapture. I believe I have discovered the glowing Source of that magical and haunting music of and beyond the Spheres. The eternal swazzle! The True Voice of Punch.

... But to return to my story: We country children with our dirty hands and straw hats gathered around as the couple lowered and set up the puppet booth. Every step of their preshow routine was watched by my young eyes with a sense of wonder I cannot capture with words.

I had no idea what was to follow, nor what all the excitement was about. There was no doubt that it was going to be something incredible, momentous and special.

The curtain opened and it was all non-stop action: screaming, violent, shocking action. I trembled, I laughed, I wept, I screamed from the sheer thrill of such a show! Who or what was the strange, amazing star of this show? He seemed like all I secretly wanted to be, and yet he completely disturbed and terrified me. Before I could dwell on these matters, a dog had bitten that massive nose, a hangman had been choked in his own noose and a chilling skeleton had been killed (again). As if seen through a foggy pinhole, I remember the scarlet and yellow fabric, the crowd’s roaring of familiar approval. How they echoed the screams and great lines of weirdly musical dialogue, as if part of an ancient Greek chorus: “Roo-too-rooey! Ooy-ey! Oh, yes, I’m a coming. How do you do, ladies and gents? I’m so happy to see you! Your most obedient, most humble, and dutiful servant, Mr. Punch. Ooy-ey, I wishes you all well and happy.” When it was all over my friends were laughing at me. I looked down and realized that I’d wet my pants.

I did not know it at the time, but this show was the work of Professor Divello and his wife, who assisted him. Years later Divello would be all a shambles, broken down and in Dublin. I was fortunate to have encountered him in his prime. Note and learn now that it is a tradition for Punch and Judy performers to go by the distinguished title of ‘Professor’ so and so.

Professor Divello had made our little hamlet a part of his spring tour. The winter was spent painting up the faded faces of his beloved children. New puppets were carved when necessary. His wife had repaired and replaced countless gold-frilled hats, tiny jingling bells, restuffed sausages, hemmed and stitched entire casts of characters. The Lion and the Unicorn had to be repainted, for the banner over the little puppet-booth’s proscenium was a real crowd pleaser. It suggested a connection with Royalty. It was true, Professor Divello’s show had been witnessed by the Queen as her carriage passed by. In a moment of legendary charity, her majesty requested that her procession must pause, that she be allowed to witness the Punch and Judy show. Within an instant, the Great Woman was transported back to the bloom of her youth, before the weight of guiding a mighty nation would etch her furrows deeper. “I should like to have this man perform at my niece’s Birthday party, come July 16th. See that it is so, and that he be amply rewarded.” And perform there Divello did. And amply rewarded he was. With the monies obtained there from, he was able to purchase the materials needed for some new and innovative puppets, a new dress for his wife and the comfort of knowing they could eat for a few months without worry.

It was a lovely day in London on May 9
^th
, in the year sixteen hundred and sixty-two. Samuel Pepys was returning from a local tavern when he happened upon a Punch and Judy show in Covent Garden. It was not really a Punch and Judy play in the familiar sense. Pepys was watching an Italian puppet show performed by Pietro Gimonde, whose stage name was Signor Bologna. The undeniable star of this strange show was a marionette named Punchincello. He was loud, vulgar, hilarious and did whatever he wanted to do. The monstrous little fellow got away with so many terrible things because he was a puppet. He perpetrated the darkest of fantasies before the eyes of a thrilled and awestruck crowd, which reeked of gin, sweat, copper pennies, stale bread, fresh flowers, mud from the gutters and blood. This Mr. Punch was an unrepentant anarchist; a force of total chaos and violent hi-jinx. The show was brilliantly performed with marionette figures. It would take about a century for Punch to lose his strings. The change would ensure the survival of the show. Now a performer could travel with a lighter, easier show. He could work alone. Best of all, his movements could be swift and, with hand puppets, the characters could
hold
things. Big things that smash skulls in.

One more fascinating anecdote from Robert Sears’ book relates an incredible tale suggesting that deformed Mr. Punch has an actual, human origin!

‘We look upon the story told by the learned and acute Galiani, in his vocabulary of the Neapolitan dialect, as upon a mere revival. The story goes thus : “Once upon a time (it was a very long time ago), a company of strolling comedians chanced to arrive at the town of Acerra, near the city of Naples, in the season when the wine began to flow. At that merry time of vintage, even more than in carnival time, the country-people are allowed all the liberty and license of the ancient Saturnalia. They daub and stain themselves with the wine-lees, put wreaths or garlands upon their heads, dress up a young man as Bacchus, and an old one as Silenus, give full play to their lungs and tongues, and play nearly all the pagan pranks that were performed by their ancestors, or predecessors in the soil, two thousand years ago, at the same joyous season of the year.

‘“Whomsoever they see, they accost with songs and jests. Judge, therefore, how the vintners gathered round the strolling players, with their jokes and vociferations. The universal rule is, that everybody must either pay a fine or cap the jests. The comedians, being jest-makers by profession, and poor by destiny, tried the latter course, but were beaten and silenced. One of the vintners, called Puccio d’Aniello, or Puccio the son of Aniello, was remarkable for a very long, hooked and queer nose, and for an appearance altogether grotesque. His chin nearly met his nose. He was the most forward and witty of all his band, and it was his torrents of drollery and fancy that drove the poor players out of the field.”

‘“Reflecting on this occurrence professionally,” so goes Galiani’s story, “the comedians thought that a character like that of their antagonist Puccio d’Aniello, might prove very attractive on the stage ; and going back to the vintner, they proposed an engagement to him, which he accepted. The engagement proved profitable to both parties, and wherever they went and acted, whether in the capital or in provincial towns, Puccio d’Aniello drew crowded houses. After some years Puccio died, but his place was presently filled by a competent and, in every way worthy, successor who assumed his name, liquified into Polecenella (the strictly correct designation in the Neapolitan dialect), and also his manner and costume, and not having the same natural nose, he perpetuated that feature of the facetious vintner by wearing a mask for the upper part of his face, upon which Puccio’s nose was lively represented. By degrees, personifications of the original Puccio d’Aniello were multiplied all over the kingdom ; and the name and character of Polecenella became immortal.”

‘This is the whole of Galiani’s story; and a very good story it is.’

The great Irish antiquarian, Thomas Crofton Croker (1798-1854) spent much his life collecting ancient Irish poetry and folklore. In the grand tradition, he would wander the backwaters of Ireland for months, for many years, collecting fragments and nearly lost fairy tales and ghostly legends from the elders in the villages. It is significant that Croker and his wife were the first to call attention to the Irish funeral tradition of keening, that is, the uttering of a lengthy wail for the dead. Often this takes the form of an open mouthed crying so deep and painful that no sound, no word can come out. This can go on for many hours. No less a team than the actual Brothers Grimm translated Croker’s Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland into German. The George Cruikshank frontispiece is well worth discovering. Croker’s key works are:

• Researches in the South of Ireland
  (1824)
  
• Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland
  (1825-27)
  
• Popular Songs of Ireland
  (1837)
  
• Fairy Legends and Traditions of the North of Ireland
  (1827-34
  unpublished
  )
  

Folklorists have been frustrated for years, in hopes of the final work on this list ever seeing the light of day. Croker spent secret and endless days, in-betwixt his work for the admiralty, traversing the North of Ireland, collecting further folkloric gold. His efforts were not in vain. They yielded over five times the amount of lost legends and curious witchcraft lore than his former researches in the south. He chose to never have this archaic tour de force published. When asked why, he famously responded, “Because the Fair Folk firmly requested that I allow this mortal-stolen lore of theirs to remain far Beyond The Fields We Know. His descendants have firmly remained loyal to his final requests concerning the amazing archive. I contacted a professor I know in Dublin, an expert on the lore and literature of Irish ghosts and hauntings: Marcus Lyons, a kind man I met through mutual friends. He was able to breech the stalwart edifice of Dublin University Library, and managed to copy out the following tale for me before being firmly asked to leave the premises. Not even pencils were allowed in the reading room. As he sat reading in the so-silent room wearing fresh cotton gloves they had supplied him with, he slipped out a stubby pencil and secretly jotted out the following tale in shorthand for inclusion here. If Punch can break the law ever day, forever, can’t I do it just once—RIGHT NOW?

Do I risk evoking the ire and wrath of the Fair Folk and are ‘they’ so ‘fair?’ To the tormented Librarian who only allows the bonafide scholar access to the rare archives I say, fie. FIE! That being said, this curious and important piece of folklore in Mr. Punch’s vast history has never been published before. If you consider the possibility of it being actually unlucky to share this story, officially ‘banned’ by the shadowy fae, then you best skip ahead. It is too late for me. I took that plunge long ago. If I must dwell there one day, I shall. The author is not responsible for any delusions, episodes or imprisonment in green, enchanted realms for decades that seem like seconds which may result from the reading of the following folkloric nugget from Croker’s ‘lost’ book, ‘Fairy Legends and Traditions of the North of Ireland.’

THE BLOODY PUPPET-MAN’S GHOST OF
PLUNKETT HEATH

There was, in this very country town of ours, a traveling Punch and Judy man. With his simple cart, he made his way across the fields of the land, from village to village. Alas, he was not born of Ireland, and knew not the ways of the Fair Folk, and those not so fair. One evening at the end of a long day of spirited, but nearly unattended performances the showman found himself without a bed, nor stack of hay in barn upon which to sleep. He chose to spend his small earnings on some bread, cheese and three bottles of local ale. Room and board were the stars and sky to one such as he. Nature was his inn. Yet he knew not who the innkeepers were in this strange land. He pushed his cart just outside of the little town, until he came to a vast field. Now the moon was rising, so he could see a distant mound, which looked like an inviting place for which to rest his tired bones. He was finishing his first bottle as he approaches the little, old hill. “Here we are Mr. Punch, a fine place to sleep. Tell your Judy to change into evening gown.” He chuckled to himself, and set his small camp up. A little fire was soon keeping him warm, as he ate his simple meal. He set Mr. Punch by the fire, and the flames crackled with movements upon the wooden face, giving it a living glow. Unbeknownst to the increasingly groggy puppet man, this was not his land to sleep upon. T’was an ancient mound, a place sacred to the Fair Folk, the fairies! Dark he was the fairy prince of the Unseelie Court who rose, full of wrath, beneath the moist earth. “Haa! What wiry thing of clay is this to sleep and snort upon our circle? He snores upon our magic-bless’d ring, and look beside him, that wooden thing. Ha! Is he sleeping Fair Folk, for of wood and root his stinks! No, a toy of the gnarl’d man. He thinks to trick me and sleep without leaving gold upon my mound! So shall I trick him in manner he shall ere long forget. For who can recall when his brains be gone. Ta Ha!” With this peculiar soliloquy behind him, the striking Fairy Prince burst into a puff of glittering green and violet smoke and entered the Punch puppet in an instant, with a jump, fully possessing and filling the wooden little man like a jug of wine.

As the birds sang, the puppet man awoke the next morn to find that his Punch puppet had already remade the bonfire, brewed two fine cups of tea and had improvised a morning meal with the leftover bread and some salvaged grasses and herbs. The puppet man either assumed he was still dreaming, drunk, dead or all of the above. When he realized that the food tasted good and the puppet was still moving about on his own, he simply decided to accept his good fortune. It was either this or lose his mind. Well, the fellow found that his puppet shows were better than ever before. Mr. Punch acted his own part, so the puppeteer was able to spend his time upon the other character’s performances. His Judy was a marvel. His Toby the best Toby. The clown’s neck stretched so high, like a crazy accordion. After a few months of this, the Punch and Judy man was eating better, and able to sleep at inns when he wished to. The dark fairy prince within the puppet was getting bored. “Enough helping this fool mortal. To be the little man and kill a hundred times both babe and queen has taught me of human vice and spleen. Now I grow weary and desire my true queen in the land unseen. Out of this wooden creature I shall... what? What is this? The door be locked? I am bound in this Thing by the soul of maker! How out? How out?” So the dark fairy banged and pounded within the puppet, but could not get free. The Punch and Judy man wondered at the puppets little fits, and tossed him in the box that night. As the mortal slept, the fairy within the puppet opened his eyes even wider and knew what he had to do. “There be one way out of this wooden cage, and with his club I shall bash and rage!” The living puppet crawled out of the little trunk, wooden club clenched in both hands. He quietly approached the sleeping puppet man, raised the club and brought it down upon his skull. The poor man’s head burst like a ripe melon, spilling his blood and fine brains upon the soil. With each BEAT and SMASH of the now red and wet club, there echoed the crashing of distant hooves on stones. Louder and louder they came. Then the dying puppeteer heard those devilish hooves crashing like comets upon the heaths, coming closer and closer. These were the cloven hooves of the horses driving the Cóiste Bodhar, the Death Coach. Before he lost consciousness, forever, he saw the coach as real as these words. The midnight-black horses were inky demons of terror—for they were headless! Yes, headless. Smooth and hairy mounds arched toward the dying puppeteer, as they sped toward him. The Nightmare Driver of the coach loomed, his face was like a yellow mask! He drove the headless horses onward at a furious pace with his whip which was fashioned out of a human spinal cord. The Coachman screamed in the wind silently, his sickly, jaundiced face looked like a dripping plague-candle of human tallow.